Religious Backlash

According to a recent survey by the Program of Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christian has dropped from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008. Mainline Protestant percentages have dropped from 17% to 12.9%. People who say they have no religion have risen in number from 8.2% to 15%.
I've been predicting this since George W. Bush "won" his first term in office, courtesy of the Supreme Court. The neocons used Evangelical support to put Bush in office, drumming up anti-liberal religious fervor. The Evangelicals hoped to use the resultant connections to power to bring about the downfall of separation of church and state in order to impose some of their religious beliefs on the rest of the country. The Catholic Church jumped on the bandwagon, supporting Bush with anit-liberal messages of its own. The antireligious backlash was predictable because now both religious groups have identified themselves with and connected themselves to a failed political movement. This is as it should be. It is my belief that nothing in the Bible and none of Christ's words justify turning His church into a political action committee.
The good news is that, in some cases, members of these religious organizations are beginning to re-examine their faith in God as it relates to their values and moral beliefs. I've certainly been involved in a spiritual quest to define myself and my relationship to God for most of my adult life, a span of just under 50 years.
I left organized religion almost 20 years ago, because every church I went to violated beliefs that I'd developed over the years. I refused to sit in a service that offended me and my beliefs. So now it's time to express my objections to established religion.
First, the Catholic Church has, in my opinion, too many untenable positions. The adherence to the belief in the infallibility of the Pope would be comical if it weren't so destructive. The recent visit to Africa by the current Pope, where he stated that condoms, rather than slowing the spread of AIDS, would make AIDS worse, makes Catholics choose between simple, straightforward facts or the word of the Pope. This is not an earthshaking revelation - most American Catholics quit believing in the infallibility of the Pope decades ago.
The Catholic stance on divorce ignores reality. Most modern, advanced societies have come to accept, first, that people make mistakes and, second, that they change over time. The church's attitude to this is "suck it up." But many Catholics worldwide, and especially in the United States, accept that divorce is preferable to the misery of life with the wrong person.
The institutionalized sexism of the Catholic Church is also untenable. There is nothing spiritually, intellectually, or morally inferior about women. The Catholic Church should allow women to serve equally with men, filling roles as priests, bishops, cardinals and even as Pope. This is the right thing to do.
It is also time for the Catholic Church to move out of the Dark Ages and allow priests and nuns to marry. They should have learned from all the sex scandals involving priests that there is no spiritual superiority to be gained from celibacy, but there is a great deal of risk in enforcing this inhuman standard on the all too human priesthood.
While the Catholic Church is not the only religion to institutionalize the requirement of its members to outbreed competing religions, it seems to be the most egregious. At a time when overpopulation is the primary cause of most of the world's ills, the Catholic Church refuses to bend - every couple is required to continue to have children throughout their childbearing years, no matter what the financial or social consequences. I've got news for the infallible Pope. Except in a few African and Asian countries, NO Catholics believe this or practice it. I think the Pope should excommunicate all of them. Of course, that would immediately reduce it from major world religion to sect status, but they would be standing by their values instead of pretending to.
Now here's my problem with Evangelicals. First, a very BRIEF description of my religious background. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I was baptized in 1960 in Waco, Texas. My mother's strong faith had a huge influence on me, and I was a regular church goer through high school. I was member of our church's youth choir and routinely would go proselytize on the beaches of Galveston Island. I have grown up. My biggest problem with Evangelicals is that they have become radicals, not conservatives. See, conservatives hold onto traditional beliefs, defending them, sometimes to the extreme and in the face of logic (as in the Catholic Church above). But modern Evangelicals have begun reinterpreting the scriptures, trying to convince us that Christ is pro-greed, pro-war, pro-poverty. They would have us believe that the separation of church and state as established by our founding fathers is just a cultural myth. Well, I reject this.
Perhaps my biggest rejection of Evangelicals has to do with proselytizing, the very sin I was guilty of in my youth. I now believe that trying to impose your faith on others is immoral. Proselytizing requires an assumption that everyone you encounter outside of your faith is spiritually inferior, that their beliefs will condemn them to hell and that conversion to your religious position will get them to heaven. This is an insulting assumption, full of the pride and ego Christ Himself would have rejected. So when proselytizers confront me, I respond with, "Is there something about my appearance that makes you think my religious beliefs are inferior to yours?" I do that because it always causes them to back off but, more importantly, it might help them reconsider just what proselytizing means to the victim. I do support one form of proselytizing - being a living example. If you lead a good moral and spiritual life, people will eventually ask, "What's your secret?" That's when you have a moral justfication for sharing your faith.
I don't believe the new megachurches would be tolerated by Christ. They are run on a business model by false prophets who are motivated by greed and power. I love the new backlash response to them - home churches, where family and neighbors gather in living rooms for worship services. No money is required, no political influence is coveted - just small groups of Christians gathering together to share their faith.
Evangelicals are doing the majority of Americans a huge favor by showing us the absurdity of a literal belief in the Bible. Of course, they don't have a literal belief in the Bible, since that's virtually impossible, given the blatant contradictions contained in its contents. In fact, no one can actually state what the Bible is - which version is the "real" Bible? And how do we interpret the Bible (we all must, after all)? And how destructive this literal interpretation is! At a time when science is our greatest hope for saving the world, Evangelicals would have us return to the Dark Ages, believing that the world is only 6,000 years old, that there were never dinosaurs, or that men co-existed with dinosaurs, and that evolution, even as it occurs before their very eyes, is more myth than fact. Faith is the most important word in the English language, but I will not accept any religion that insists that faith overrides fact. I do not believe the Bible or Christianity requires us to do that.
The weakest and most ludicrous symptom of Evangelical excess is the apocalyptic crap (that's exactly what it is - no better word to describe it) being spewed by some of the biggest names in American Christendom. These apocalyptic movements have been around since the death of Christ. At least one group of believers thought Judgment Day would come in their lifetime, and they lived in the time of Christ. Christ Himself said you cannot know the end of days, yet these false prophets are convinced they KNOW. It is a lie.
Finally, Evangelicals succeeded in turning their faithful into a huge, powerful political action committee. I believe Christ would be ashamed of this. If He returned today, he would not flog the moneychangers, he would flog these pseudoreligious politicians. It is the vilest corruption of Christianity I've seen in my lifetime. And make no mistake - I believe the counter-evangelical political activists on the left are just as wrong.
I used Evangelicals and the Catholic Church to make my point, but almost all of organized religion is guilty of some or all of these sins to varying degrees. But as long as churches feel compelled to violate common sense and the moral positions of most reasonable human beings, their decline in a modern, enlightened age, is inevitable.
For myself, I expect to continue conducting homechurch services with my family. I have three basic beliefs that I hope to instill in my three sons:
1. There is a God.
2. There are many paths to God.
3. Christ is my path to God.